NYC Gifted and Talented Program and Testing

The Dept. of Ed. just announced the new criteria for NYC Gifted and Talented admissions for 4th and 5th grades for the 2015-16 school year. Don’t worry, there’s no OLSAT test or NNAT-2 test involved but make sure your child is adored by his or her teacher, that’s for sure! According to the DOE here’s the “new and improved” criteria they will be using if you want your child to enter a G&T program going into 4th or 5th grades.

• 2015 New York State English Language Arts (ELA) and Math scores
• 2015 Report Card Grades
• Descriptors of Exceptional Characteristics provided by the student’s teacher

The deadline to apply is on May 22, 2015 and here are the locations for all 5 boroughs to submit your application. Guess what? You get to leave work early since you can’t do this online or by mail. Did I just have a flashback to 1972? All requests must be made in person and the Family Welcome Center facilities are only open 8am to 3pm. So much for being so welcoming and for those parents who don’t have any flexibility at their jobs to cut-out early. Just tell your boss that you want your child to have a better life (and job!) than you and you must leave early! I’m sure the “boss man” will completely understand…yeah, right.

The Dept. of Ed. does provide specific guidance for the criteria but it does allow some opinions and biases being inserted by the teacher to determine if the child is worthy of getting a coveted seat into the NYC G&T program or not. Here are a few hypothetical situations that could occur to the detriment of the child:

• The teacher and parent(s) don’t get along and the only recourse the teacher has to get back at the parents is to not give a child a recommendation. What if the parents are hardcore Republicans who support Ted Cruz for president and don’t believe in teacher unions. Oh yeah, those parents would be homeschooling anyway.
• The teacher and principal collude because the child scores 4’s on both the ELA and math test and they want to keep their school test scores high, therefore don’t recommend the child attend a G&T program. Remember, schools in NYC are ranked on how children perform on the not-so-popular common core ELA and math tests.
• The teacher and parents are good friends outside school and the parents use that friendship to manipulate the teacher in writing exaggerated claims about their child’s abilities. Highly unlikely, I know…but these are hypothetical situations! 🙂

Of course, the list of hypothetical situations could go on and on. So fun to think about all the possibilities and the lengths some parents in New York City would go to for their talented tot to get into the gifted and talented program.

I do find it interesting the DOE announced the criteria included state test scores were being used a week after the state tests were completed. I’m sure if parents knew up front that this was part of the criteria process parents across all five boroughs would be heading over in droves to Testing Mom to get free practice questions for the New York ELA and math tests.